“I just wish you could remember. I wish you could tell us. So we could know his final hours.”
“I’m sorry. I know Mrs. Hall thinks I’m faking it, but I’m not…”
“Nothing’s come back?”
And here she had suggested to a few people that memories swirled around her, trying to form. “I remembered David being silly about a school assignment when we were freshmen. That’s all.” Him braying the lines from Romeo and Juliet.
He veered over into the next lane, jostling her. “Sorry.”
It wasn’t the same as a memory, but she could show him David’s note. It was in her pocket. But she decided to wait, to see how this evening went. She decided to play another card.
“David was overheard saying to me, that night, that whatever he was upset about was connected to my dad.”
Now he glanced at her. “What?”
“I guess something my dad did before he died.”
“Jane, that can’t be right. When he passed, he was going to open his own CPA start-up. It would have been lucrative and steady. I can’t imagine any way remotely dangerous that his and David’s lives intersected. Who told you this?”
“Trevor Blinn.”
“Well, I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
“We’ve never talked about you finding my dad dead.” It wasn’t a statement; it was a request for him to repeat the memory she didn’t have.
“We did when you had your memory. More than once, didn’t your mother tell you?”
“You tell me.” Her voice sounded small. Like a child asking for a story heard many times.
“Your parents both went to run errands, but separately. They left you at our house because you and David loved to draw comics together. And you had one you were working on, so you were going to stay with us for the day because you didn’t want to go with them.”
“Did he say good-bye to me?”
“Of course he did.” Cal’s voice nearly broke. “He loved you very much.”
“How did I find out?” Her mother had told her, but she wanted to hear his version.
“He didn’t show up for dinner. Your mom was back and was worried. He wasn’t answering his phone. So Perri and I went looking for him. He had mentioned he was running by his uncle’s house to do some work on it before putting it on the market. I found him there. In a back bedroom.”
“His uncle’s gun in his hand?”
“Yes.”
“And no note.”
“No note. He was handling the gun and it went off.”
“You and my mom aren’t keeping something bad from me, are you? That there was a suicide note? Because people talked. I know they did.”
“I swear, there was no note.”
“So what would David have learned that he would tell me that day about Dad?”
“I have no idea, Jane, I truly don’t. We weren’t business partners anymore. Obviously our business failing had been hard, but we were both going to land on our feet. And he was the most decent man I’ve ever known, integrity above reproach, and he was excited for his life and his family and his future.”
“Mom said once that when Dad died, she was too wrapped up in her own shock to be of much comfort to me.”
“You took it very hard. You were not yourself. Terribly depressed. You went kind of dark in your clothes, your hair, your whole look. I think your friends were not of much comfort because they didn’t seem to understand—so you thought—what you were going through. You were drinking. David was constantly worried about you.”
She thought of the video at Happy Taco, David trying to calm her.
Because she didn’t agree with Cal: She thought Trevor was telling her the truth. Even if her father’s death was an accident—and it had been investigated and found to be so—then maybe he still knew something, had something, that David had somehow found or learned or known and told her about the night of the crash.
Where did Dad and David’s lives overlap? she wondered. “I’m sorry David was so worried about me. Tell me what was important in David’s life before…the crash happened?”
Cal waited a moment to answer. “School. Football season, although he was hurt, so he wasn’t playing, he hated that. He wanted to get healthy again, so he was resting a lot, working on school projects.”
“Did he have a job?”
“No.”
“Did he ever get in trouble no one knew about? Did the police ever bring him home?”
“What a question, Jane.” For the first time Cal sounded irritated with her.
“I…” She changed her mind on showing him the note. “My memory…I sometimes see fragments. I don’t always know what they mean.” Liar, liar, pants on fire but so what, she thought. This man was being somewhat nice and helpful, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. He might run back to Perri and tell her everything she said. “And David passed me a note in class. He said he was in big trouble and needed my help. I don’t know why he didn’t ask you or Mrs. Hall or Trevor or Kamala, but he asked me.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother kept the note he’d passed me. Did she never tell you and Perri?”
He sighed. “No, she didn’t. If that was the last thing he ever wrote, I sure would like it back.”
“I understand,” she said. But she didn’t offer to give it to him.
He was silent for a long minute. She thought he wouldn’t speak. He finally said, “Most people have believed the simplest explanation for that night: he spent six hours trying to talk you out of suicide and failed.”
“Would David have gotten in a car with me or let me drive if that were true? He would have called you, called my mom.”
“Not if you begged him not to call. If you asked him to let it be the two of you, just talking. Because he would have been sure that he could save you.”
“Is that the kind of person I was?”
“I don’t know. You didn’t like to share him.” He said the last sentence like it was a painful admission. “In high school, you and David drifted a bit. Still friends, but not like how you’d been. He started dating Kamala. I wondered how you felt about it, because I sensed you cared for him. That he was more than a friend to you. But you adored Kamala and so you seemed OK with them being a couple. After your dad died, you withdrew. Dark clothes, dark fingernail polish.”
Such a man, Jane thought, to focus only on the exterior. “I withdrew.”
“From everyone. Except David could still talk to you. Kamala tried. She’d be at our house crying because you wouldn’t let her in the house, you wouldn’t talk to her. I think that was when she and David got much closer.”
Wasn’t that nice of me, Jane thought.
“You started to get back to normal…I mean, not normal, but back to being, you know, happier. Adjusting. Being the Jane we knew.”
“You don’t adjust,” she said. “There is no closure. There’s only learning to live with the loss.”
“That’s true,” he said. “So true.”
“Your wife attacked me at David’s grave. I have a video of it. She’s proof you never adjust.” Now she watched him. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because if someone is posting about knowing something about my son, I want to know. And ALL WILL PAY sounds like a threat.”
She said nothing further about suspecting Kamala. No one believed Kamala could burn down a house. But Jane did.